Last week, the US joined forces with Japan to try to stop the yen’s slide. It’s the first time the two sides have intervened in the Japanese currency in 15 years, and in many ways it was an unprecedented and unusual move, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent choosing to sell euros (as opposed to dollars) and the use of a little-known Federal Reserve repo facility. So why did the yen’s value drop so precipitously in the first place? And will this intervention be enough to stop it? Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, explains why the Bank of Japan initially refrained from raising rates, why East Asian currencies (not just the yen) have been so weak lately, the improving fiscal outlook for Japan, and what to look out for next.
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Last month, President Xi Jinping spoke at an AI conference in Shanghai, China. There he promoted AI accessibility for the world, touting China’s adoption of open-weighted models.
After OpenAI’s rogue model incident in which a training model hacked into the company HuggingFace and stole confidential information, the discussion over whether models should be open or closed has intensified.
“Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carion spoke with Adam Segal at the Council of Foreign Relations about China’s soft power play in the global AI arms race.
Former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says America is heading toward an AI jobs crisis. And she doesn't think Washington is ready.
Raimondo joins Kara to explain why she's more worried about the country's political system than the technology itself, why Congress has failed to prepare workers for AI, and what she thinks should happen before millions of jobs disappear. She also discusses the future of the CHIPS Act, data centers, AI safety, higher education, and why she's launched a bipartisan effort to help workers adapt before it's too late.
Recorded live at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg Center as part of the Discovery Series.
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What drives a man to turn down half a million pounds at 18, test Mark Zuckerberg's sincerity over dinner, and wonder aloud if he can win a second Nobel Prize? For Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, the answer is a lifelong pursuit of artificial general intelligence — and an unshakeable belief that the technology he's creating will change everything about what it means to be human. Oz speaks with journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby about his new book, The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence, tracing Demis's extraordinary journey from chess prodigy to the man at the center of the most consequential technological race of our time.
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Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the author of six books, including More Money Than God, The Power Law, The Man Who Knew, and The World's Banker. His latest book is The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence.
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Timestamps
[00:00:00] Start.
[00:02:11] The twinkly eyed polymath who became Sebastian's next book.
[00:06:55] Picking the next book project the way a great VC picks a startup.
[00:09:41] Why God keeps crashing the superintelligence party.
[00:11:13] Shane Legg's grainy 2009 prophecy — and the nervous giggle.
[00:13:11] Ilya Sutskever burns an effigy.
[00:13:54] Demis at 4 a.m., hunting God's algorithm.
[00:18:43] Super-abundance, Mad Max, and the China shock lesson.
[00:22:39] The kitchen debate with Geoff Hinton that flipped Sebastian.
[00:24:06] Why a zero-percent chance of doom is indefensible.
[00:24:52] Will Washington seize the labs? The Mythos wake-up call.
[00:27:18] Anthropic's bull case, bear case, and a dead parent's letter.
[00:33:24] Where Sebastian and Benedict Evans part ways.
[00:38:16] Is the SaaS apocalypse overdone? One word: Palantir.
[00:39:53] The AI friend you'll never switch.
[00:41:56] Does Google win consumer AI by default?
[00:44:45] Four cities, eight days: China actually talks safety.
[00:47:28] A Cold War non-proliferation playbook for AI.
[00:49:45] Did the chip export controls actually work?
[00:51:49] Burned doves: why Washington swears China won't talk.
[00:54:56] "By 2028, the race is over" — one lab boss' bet.
[00:59:11] Inside Hikvision: toddlers, sensors, and US sanctions.
[01:01:07] Bill Gurley's Uber bet: venture capital perfected.
[01:05:18] Luke Nosek bear-hugs DeepMind into existence.
[01:10:52] Thiel's heresy: never invest by committee.
[01:11:59] How Founders Fund nearly fumbled the deal of the century.
[01:14:30] Selling to Google for $650M: a secret British heist?
[01:16:41] The Traitorous Eight, gardening leave, and the UK's to-do list.
[01:20:55] Ender's Game: "That's really how I see myself."
[01:23:42] Too dumb for Gödel, Escher, Bach? Maybe an LLM can help.
[01:25:19] If not Demis or Sam, then Dario.
[01:26:04] My royalties cliff — and what dropped in late 2022.
[01:27:47] Lila Sciences and the labs that run themselves.
[01:31:13] Sebastian's billboard: "Prepare your mind."
[01:35:14] The one thing Sebastian will never outsource to AI.
[01:40:09] Parting thoughts.
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Kara speaks with journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby about his new book, "The Infinity Machine," and its central figure: Demis Hassabis, the CEO and co-founder of Google's AI research lab, DeepMind, and a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
Sebastian argues that Hassabis is one of the original scientist-entrepreneurs of modern AI. And although he's extremely competitive and research-driven, Sebastian says Hassabis is also one of the few big names in AI development who genuinely cares about public safety. However, despite his best intentions, Hassabis doesn’t have the power to change the race dynamic driving AI’s rapid, and potentially unsafe, development.
Kara and Sebastian break down DeepMind's relationship with Google, the push toward artificial general intelligence, and whether the government can regulate the technology before something goes wrong.
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It's possible that the war in Iran could reshape financial flows in significant ways. Perhaps the Gulf states will end up as less desirable places to do business. Perhaps Iran will have a tollbooth at the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps this episode will accelerate the world's shift away from oil. It's impossible to say. But given the uncertainty, fresh questions are being raised about the existing financial world order, upon the top of which the US dollar sits. On this episode, we speak once again with Brad Setser, the Whitney Shepardson senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We discuss how the war is already creating new global imbalances, and the degree to which this episode parallels past energy shocks. We also talk about broader trends in reserve management, other factors driving financial flows, and the unique situation facing East Asia, which is seeing a surge in its energy import bills at the same time its making making a fortune selling chips for the AI boom.
Read more:US Probes Suspicious Oil Trades Made Before Trump PivotsChina’s $51 Trillion Savings Help Bonds to Outperform During War
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The relationship between the US and Europe is deteriorating along both security and economic dimensions. The Trump administration has imposed tariffs, while also being sharply critical of NATO allies. So what are European leaders to do? Hope things go back to normal in the US? Or perhaps become closer with China? Our guest on this episode says the latter would be a grave mistake. This episode was recorded live on April 1 at the DC headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations. We spoke with Gina Raimondo, now a CFR Distinguished Fellow, who previously served as the commerce secretary in the Biden Administration, and prior to that was the governor of Rhode Island. She discusses her view that European industry is being hollowed out by China, and that the only path forward is a global, unified, non-China trading bloc, which is an idea that's being thwarted by the Trump administration. We also talk about the legacy of the CHIPS Act, and her fears about AI creating mass unemployment and destabilizing our democracy.
Read more:US Lawmakers Propose Crackdown on Chip Tool Sales to ChinaCheap Chinese Cars Are Waiting on Detroit's Doorstep
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What drives a man to turn down half a million pounds at 18, test Mark Zuckerberg's sincerity over dinner, and wonder aloud if he can win a second Nobel Prize? For Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, the answer is a lifelong pursuit of artificial general intelligence — and an unshakeable belief that the technology he's creating will change everything about what it means to be human. Oz speaks with journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby about his new book, The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence, tracing Demis's extraordinary journey from chess prodigy to the man at the center of the most consequential technological race of our time.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Three weeks into Trump’s war with Iran, is anyone actually winning? Or are we watching a conflict spiral with no clear endgame?
Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov sit down with Ian Bremmer (president of the Eurasia Group) and Dan Senor (former policy advisor to Mitt Romney, and the host of the “Call Me Back” podcast) for a real debate on the war.
They talk about whether or not the U.S. has a strategy for either meaningful victory or enduring peace, the consequences the war has had on regional stability and on Trump’s political base at home, how our actions in Iran have affected the country’s standing in other global conflicts — like the Russia-Ukraine war, and in Venezuela.
Plus: what it all means for the global economy, oil prices, and our experts predict how things could unfold from here.
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The war in Iran has already lasted longer than many people might have expected. There was an initial assumption, after oil prices started surging, that President Trump could just declare victory at any moment. But that hasn't happened, and the longer this goes on, the more damage is being done to the region's energy infrastructure. Already a key gas plant in Qatar has been damaged so badly that it's expected to take it years to repair. On this episode, we speak with return guest Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group who specializes in energy and Iran. Beyond his current work, Greg is the author of two books on the history of oil in Iran. We discuss the logic of the war from both the Iranian and American perspectives, and why the Trump administration may have walked into a "strategic trap" with no easy way to declare victory and get out.
Read more:
Iran Leaves an Isolated Trump Grappling With Historic Oil Crisis
How Iran Has Effectively Closed the Strait of Hormuz
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China's dominance of the rare earths market is well known. This not only creates potential vulnerabilities for companies, should access to those rare earths ever get cut off, it also gives China significant leverage in trade negotiations right now. Of course, the issue is not that China is naturally endowed with more of these materials, but rather that, over the decades, it's built up an industrial ecosystem to mine and process them. So, is there any prospect of the US entering the arena in a way that's actually competitive? Our guest says yes. Heidi Crebo-Rediker is a senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomics Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Earlier in her career, she was the US State Department's first chief economist. For the CFR, Heidi has undertaken an extensive study of the US position with respect to rare earths and developed a broad set of suggestions for how the US can actually compete. She discusses the resources we have right now, and the technologies and policies that could make the US competitive in this arena.
Read the report here: https://www.cfr.org/report/leapfrogging-chinas-critical-minerals-dominance/
Read more:
Why China’s Grip on Critical Minerals Is So Hard to Break
EU to Offer US Critical Minerals Partnership to Check China
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Venezuela is sitting on, by some measures, the biggest oil reserves in the world. And yet, in the immediate wake of Maduro's capture by US forces, the actual price of oil has moved very little. So what gives? And what are the stakes for the industry? On this episode, we speak with Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group. Greg has the perfect background for this conversation, because in addition to closely monitoring both the oil industry and the global geopolitical environment, he's a trained historian. So we talk about the long history of the Venezuelan oil industry, starting in its boom years, and then its ultimate decline amid nationalization, corruption, sanctions, and blockades. He explains to us the potential huge costs of restarting production, the actual logic behind the arrest, as well as potential fallout across Latin America, and with Venezuela's friends, such as Iran, China, and Cuba.
Read more:
Trump Says Venezuela to Send US Up to 50 Million Barrels of Oil
Slumping Mideast Oil Market Adds to Signs of Global Weakness
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When President Trump announced the tariffs on Liberation Day, it seemed to truly mark the end of the old world trading system. But of course it had been dying for a long time. The first Trump administration erected aggressive trading barriers against China. Then Biden expanded them further. And there were signs of its demise even under Obama. So what was the global trading system? What will come after it? What are the benefits and costs to changes? On this episode, we speak with Michael Froman, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the former Trade Representative during Obama's second term. We discuss how the system began to collapse, and what he sees as the emergence of a new "polyamorous" global trading system, where friends and allies and partners move in a more liquid manner between different poles and blocs.
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There are several markets that have really settled down since the tumult of early April. But strange, unusual things are still popping up, particularly in the currency space. Over the last few days, we've seen a huge surge in the Taiwan dollar. This is important, in part, because Taiwanese life insurance companies are major buyers of US dollar assets, such as corporate bonds. Suddenly, they're looking at a major hit to the value of these holdings, with losses that are only partially hedged. So why the sudden move, and what does it mean? On this episode, we speak with Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We first talked to Brad about exactly this topic back in 2019, when the story was more of an intellectual curiosity rather than a market-moving development. We discuss the implications, and what it means in the context of the Trump administration's trade strategy.
More:
Why Taiwanese Life Insurers Are The Great ‘Whodunit' Of The Financial World
Taiwan’s Markets Jolted as Currency Surges Most Since 1980s
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He needs no introduction: When trade is in the news, we speak with Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. Brad has been talking for awhile about the major imbalances of world trade, and the US-China relationship in particular. However, rather than building up a large trading bloc with our allies to counter Chinese influence, the Trump administration has chosen a path of going it alone, targeting friend and foe alike with large and wide-ranging tariffs. In this episode, we talk about the significance of the move, the potential damage, and what, if any, positive scenarios could result.
Read More:
Global Recession Fears Engulf Wall Street on Tariff Retaliation
Matt Levine: The Tariffs Have Some Math
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It's Election Day in the US, so there's no need for any real explanation of what's at stake. Last night in New York City, we hosted a special live Odd Lots event, where we interviewed some of our regular guests on stage to talk about the vote, as well as the economic and market implications in the days and years ahead — regardless of who wins. First up, you'll hear a conversation about prediction markets, regular markets, and vote-watching with Skanda Amarnath of Employ America, Neil Dutta of Renaissance Macro, and prediction markets bettor Zvi Mowshowitz. And then in the second half of the show, we hear from the Council on Foreign Relations fellow Brad Setser on the global environment — what Brad calls an "unhealthy globalization" — that the next president will inherit.
Read More: How the World Is Prepping for a Trump or Harris Victory
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Scott and Jessica chat with Dan Senor, a leading expert on Israel and the Middle East. They discuss the latest escalations between Israel and Hezbollah, the strategic consequences of recent developments, and the potential for a broader conflict. Dan also shares his insights on the role of U.S. diplomacy in the region and reflects on the one-year anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attacks.
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There's a lot going on in currency markets and global trade at the moment. The Japanese yen has been falling, even after authorities seemed to intervene to try to arrest the slide. Meanwhile, weakness in the Chinese yuan has helped boost that country's exports and is fueling talk of a new "China Shock" for the rest of the world, even as its economy continues to grapple with slower economic growth and excess capacity. In this episode of Lots More, we bring back Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to walk us through these developments, along with his new paper, "Power and Financial Interdependence." We also talk about what China's excavator exports can tell us about its economy.
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For years, people have been talking about the end of US dollar dominance or how some other currency could usurp its role around the world. But when it comes to global finance and trade, the dollar is as dominant as ever. Given the size of China's economy, the renminbi is considered one potential challenger. And in fact, China is making real moves on this front. On this episode of Lots More, we speak with Zongyuan Zoe Liu, the Maurice R. Greenberg fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of a recent article on China's de-dollarization efforts. As she sees it, the rise of a new energy and commodity system — one that is breaking away from oil — creates the opportunity for markets that are denominated in something other than dollars. Meanwhile, China, having seen Russia get cut off from the dollar system, has an increased incentive to protect itself from a similar fate. We discuss the prospects of a major change and how China could benefit, as well as the risks. We also discuss the current state of Chinese macro.
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Dan Senor, a former White House foreign policy advisor and the bestselling author of “The Genius Of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World,” joins Scott to discuss the global response we’ve seen thus far from the war in Israel.
Scott opens with his thoughts on consolidation.
Algebra of Happiness: caring for others.
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Argentina has always been interesting from an economic and financial markets perspective, to put it mildly. And it's gotten even more interesting following the recent election of Javier Milei as the country's next president. Milei, whose policies could be described as radically libertarian, has floated a bunch of new ideas including getting rid of the central bank and dollarizing Argentina's economy in order to finally put an end to rampant inflation. But how realistic is this path for a nation which has spent decades burning through loans from external creditors? This week on Lots More, we chat with Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, about why Argentina's issues persist and what options it has going forward.
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So far, the war between Israel and Hamas has had only a mild impact on world markets. Oil prices are higher than they were prior to the terrorist attack on October 7, but the link between the war and the broader oil market is ambiguous. So what are the risks, if the conflict widens or remains prolonged? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Gregory Brew, analyst at the Eurasia Group, to get a better understanding of what we've seen so far, and the the things we should be watching for.
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The Chinese economy is in a slump. Industrial production is down. Retail sales are down. The property industry continues to struggle. The People's Bank of China just did a surprise rate cut. So what's driving the decline and what can the government do about it? On this episode of the podcast we speak with Zongyuan Zoe Liu, the Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the new book Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions. She explains how the "four Ds" — demand, debt, demographics and decoupling — are acting as a persistent drag on the Chinese economy right now. We discuss possible policy responses and how China's war chest of financial assets plays into the government's strategy.
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A lot has happened since we last spoke to Brad Setser in April 2020, towards the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. For a start, Setser was appointed to be a trade advisor in the Biden administration during a period of immense disruption. There was lots of talk about a potential reshuffling of the way the global economy works, and things like nearshoring and deglobalization. But some big predictions for the way world trade will function haven't come to fruition. For instance, the US is still running a current account deficit and China is still running a current account surplus. So in this episode, Setser returns to discuss what has and hasn't changed in global trade in the last three years. He's left the Biden administration and returned to the Council on Foreign Relations, where he's a senior fellow. He talks about everything from the US-China trade imbalance to the impact of sanctions on the world economy to China's electric vehicle and plane production, plus the future of the dollar.
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We talk a lot about the US shale boom. And we talk a lot about OPEC. But one of the most exciting stories in the global oil industry is the incredible rise of Guyana, which has seen a massive amount of oil discovery over the past several years. This oil boom has made the South American country one of the fastest growing economies in the world. So what does history say about the emergence of a new oil superpower? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with oil historian Gregory Brew about the Guyana story, and what happens when so much new oil is being produced outside of OPEC.
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Huge interview today. "Power Law" author Sebastian Mallaby joins the show to break down some of the most important moments in VC history and his lessons from writing the book, including: the youth revolt (14:18), KP vs Sequoia (27:02), what makes a legendary VC (38:40), and more!
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(1:42) Sebastian explains how and why he wrote a book on the history of VC
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With major economies around the world coming to a screeching halt, emerging markets are in a squeeze of historic proportions. Not only are they being buffeted by a domestic health crisis, but export industries are getting clobbered at the same time as access to dollars is drying up. On this episode, we speak with Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations on the historic nature of this episode, which countries are particularly vulnerable, and what policies might allow for a way out.
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You probably haven't thought much about the Taiwanese life insurance industry. Why would you have? But they're among the most fascinating entities in the financial world. And for a long time they've been a source of incredible mystery. They've built up a gigantic position in foreign, US-dollar denominated assets in order to fund domestic liabilities denominated in Taiwanese Dollars. But how do they hedge this currency mismatch? Nobody has figured it out until now. On this week's podcast, we speak with Brad Setser of CFR and Exante Data about how he and a pseudonymous partner finally cracked the code.
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